Marvell Pantheon 800MHz chipset to create the $99 smartphone market

As it turns out, you won’t need to break the bank if you want to get your hands on a surprisingly powerful smartphone. Yesterday, we heard about the ST-Ericsson U6715 mobile chipset that would bring smartphones down to about $135, but today it’s even cheaper with the $99 Marvell Pantheon smartphone platform.

Using this Marvell platform, smartphone makers should be able to produce and sell quite the powerful little handset for less than a hundred bucks. It’s not like you’re going to be anemic on the specs either, because they’re mentioning dedicated ARM compliant application processors that clock in at over 800MHz.

The exact specs are still a little muddy, but the press release makes specific mention of having dual ARM and DSP processors for modem functionality, support for 720p HD video, over 20 million triangles, DirectX, Open GL ES 2.0 compliant 3D graphics, and RF interfaces.

Rather than sticking to just one operating system, the Marvell Pantheon platform will be able to support Google Android, Windows Mobile, and “other leading operating systems.” The first smartphones using the new platform should be expected in the next 12 to 18 months.